Monthly Archives: September 2014

Joint Over- and Underdiagnosis

Today I had several more terrible lectures on ADHD. In one of them, I was informed that America is medicalizing normal childhood mischief and loading anyone who gets worse than a B+ up with Ritalin or amphetamines as part of … Continue reading

[Ozy] A Response to Spandrell

[Content note: Gender, relationships, sexuality. Some sexually explicit content. Discussion without endorsement of various forms of transphobia, homophobia, et cetera. Ozy wishes you to know they wrote this in a very timely manner after Spandrell’s original post and I just … Continue reading

Does Class Warfare Have A Free-Rider Problem?

Many people believe that the rich have captured government for their own ends. For example, rich people use their money and power to decrease tax rates on the wealthy and sabotage legislation meant to protect the working man. But this … Continue reading

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Book Review: Singer on Marx

I’m not embarassed for choosing Singer’s Marx: A Very Short Introduction as a jumping-off point for learning more leftist philosophy. I weighed the costs and benefits of reading primary sources versus summaries and commentaries, and decided in favor of the … Continue reading

What The Hell, Hegel?

I’m reading through Marx: A Very Short Introduction, and one of its best features is its focus on Marx’s influence from Hegel. Hegel is really interesting. I should rephrase that. Hegel is famously boring. His books are boring. His ideas … Continue reading

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Society Is Fixed, Biology Is Mutable

Today during an otherwise terrible lecture on ADHD I realized something important we get sort of backwards. There’s this stereotype that the Left believes that human characteristics are socially determined, and therefore mutable. And social problems are easy to fix, … Continue reading

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Links For September 2014

If he’d posted it here it would have been a Comment Of The Month, but since he posted it on Less Wrong I’m reduced to linking it: Viliam Bur on why Freud is not your strawman of Freud. Last links … Continue reading

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Open Thread 4: The Quick And The Thread

1. Big thanks to Bakkot and Alice for adding the script last month that highlights new comments in green and makes this place much more readable. 2. I’ve closed comments on any posts older than one month in order to … Continue reading

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Mapmaker, Mapmaker, Make Me A Map

I was recently looking through some old concept-maps of communities, like Julia’s Map of Bay Area Memespace, Scharlach’s Dark Enlightenment Roadmap and especially xkcd’s map of the Internet. And I thought we should have something like that for the rationalist … Continue reading

Cooperation Un-Veiled

Related to: The Invisible Nation – Reconciling Utilitarianism And Contractualism Contractualism tries to derive morality from an agreement that even selfish agents would willingly sign if they knew about it. In theory, you would gain from such an agreement, since … Continue reading

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